During a press conference in the White House Rose Garden on Friday morning, President Trump pledged to “take care” of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents moments before signing policy into law that strips the agency of deportation powers.

“ICE is abused by the press and by the Democrats,” Trump said. “And by the way, we’re going to be taking care of ICE. Whether we talk about the new bill … we’re going to be taking care of ICE. They wanted to get rid of ICE and the bill is just the opposite of that.”

The bipartisan spending package, however, dismantles ICE agents’ power to deport illegal aliens living in the U.S. who have either relatives or friends of Unaccompanied Alien Children (UACs).

A provision signed off by Trump bans ICE agents from deporting any illegal alien sponsor who takes in a UAC after the child has been trafficked across the U.S.-Mexico border. The spending bill now codifies into law, indefinitely, that federal immigration officials are not allowed to deport not only illegal alien sponsors of UACs, but also any illegal alien living in the household of a UAC or those who claim to be “potential sponsors” of UACs.

The measure provides a legal shield, or de facto amnesty, to any illegal alien claiming to be part of a household that is sponsoring a UAC, even those affiliated with the MS-13 gang.

Trump’s signing the bill into law also paralyzes ICE agents’ ability to readily detain and deport illegal aliens who have just arrived in the U.S. By expanding the Catch and Release program, Trump’s law forces ICE agents to release more border crossers into the interior of the country, making it close to impossible to ever deport these foreign nationals in the future. About 99 percent of these illegal aliens are never deported.

The UAC program has resettled close to 13,000 young migrants across the U.S. in the last three months of 2018, alone. Assuming that each of these UACs was resettled in a household where at least two illegal aliens reside, this would account for a de facto amnesty for about 26,000 illegal aliens.

Nearly 35,000 UACs were resettled in the U.S. in Fiscal Year 2018, with the vast majority going to live with sponsors in California, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Tennessee, and Virginia.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.